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AMERICAN SEXUAL CULTURE:
WOMEN’S LIBERATION, ROCK MUSIC,
AND EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY, 1968-1976
by
Rebecca Sheehan
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)
May 2010
Copyright 2010 Rebecca Sheehan

This dissertation argues that in the years between 1968 and 1976 groups within the women’s liberation movement, rock music culture, and evangelical religion transformed American sexual culture and forged a new sexual order. An examination of these groups together demonstrates their similarities and differences and offers insight into the paradoxes of sexual liberalization. White radical feminists sought to achieve women’s liberation through deconstructing patriarchal power and rejecting biologically determined roles. Rock music groupies sought sexual freedom through rejecting passive femininity. Glam rockers performed liberation through androgynous and bisexual personas in order to sell records. Evangelical women sought freedom through sexual pleasure and through submitting to the existing sex role system. All focused on sex roles and used arguments about freedom, and they began to revolutionize sexual norms by asserting women’s right to sexual pleasure; by pushing the boundaries of gender roles to include new masculine and feminine styles; and by promoting greater tolerance for homosexuality. Yet the newly permissive culture challenged biblical orthodoxy on sex roles and incited an evangelical counterrevolution designed to reassert heterosexual marriage and male dominance within the home. These competing revolutions compromised and fed sexual liberalization and created a new and ambiguous sexual order. The new sexual order combined the language of gendered liberation with permissive sexuality and biblical morality. It affirmed active female sexuality and privileged heterosexual marriage.

AMERICAN SEXUAL CULTURE:
WOMEN’S LIBERATION, ROCK MUSIC,
AND EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY, 1968-1976
by
Rebecca Sheehan
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(HISTORY)
May 2010
Copyright 2010 Rebecca Sheehan